Seeded soda bread

Photograph: Harry Weir
Serves: 6
Course: Side Dish
Cooking Time: 0 hr 25 mins

Ingredients

  • 150g wholemeal flour
  • 150g plain flour
  • 1tsp fine sea salt
  • ½tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 100g mixed seeds
  • 1tbs rosemary, finely chopped
  • 230ml buttermilk

1 Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius, or equicvlent. Grease a 1.5lb loaf tin with a little flavourless oil or softened butter and dust the inside with a little flour, then tap out the excess.

2 Put the wholemeal flour, plain flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl, and mix well together.

3 Add most of the mixed seeds, keeping a tablespoon or so reserved to sprinkle on top later.

4 Add the rosemary and the buttermilk and mix well with a large wooden or metal spoon until all of the ingredients are completely combined.

5 Scrape the bread mix into the prepared tin and spread the top with a palette knife or the back of a spoon. Sprinkle the reserved seeds on the top and bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes.

6 Remove the loaf from the oven and leave to cool for five minutes in the tin before turning out on to a wire rack to cool.

Aoife Noonan

Aoife Noonan

Aoife Noonan is a pastry chef and culinary consultant. She writes a weekly baking column for the Irish Times Magazine